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A 10-minute documentary made by artist Prune Nourry, director Vincent Lorca and Google Arts & Culture uses generative AI to recreate historical studios associated with women sculptors in Paris. It accompanies Nourry’s Visionaries exhibition at the Petit Palais, open from October 20, 2026, to January 30, 2027.
Artist Prune Nourry and Google Arts & Culture have made a 10-minute documentary that uses generative AI to evoke the Paris studios of women sculptors whose workspaces were rarely photographed. The film is being shown with Nourry’s Visionaries exhibition at the Petit Palais, which opened October 20 and is scheduled to run through January 30, 2027.
The project was developed with film director Vincent Lorca after a year of research by three art historians. They gathered letters, journals and photographic portraits connected to women sculptors who lived and worked in Paris. The source account says few historical photographs of the artists’ actual studios survive, leaving limited visual evidence of the settings in which they worked.
Lynn Cherny, a creative technologist-in-residence at the Google Arts & Culture Lab, used Google generative AI and image-editing models to create studio scenes associated with artists including Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, Jane Poupelet and Camille Claudel. A custom tool built with Google Gemini was used to create 3D models from archival photographs and animate camera paths, giving viewers a virtual route through the reconstructed spaces.
A separate sequence uses AI image editing on an archival photograph of Antoine Bourdelle’s studio. Conceived by Nourry and Lorca, the sequence gradually fades the female students from the image until only the men remain. The film is installed in the museum galleries with the exhibition; Google Arts & Culture has also published a behind-the-scenes trailer online.
Making Women Artists Visible
The film uses reconstructed environments to address a gap in the historical record: while letters, journals and portraits can document women sculptors’ lives, surviving photographs of their studios are scarce. The AI-made scenes offer a way to imagine those spaces, but they are not photographs or direct documentation of what the studios looked like. Their value lies in presenting a research-based interpretation alongside the surviving material.
The Bourdelle photograph sequence makes the project’s argument about historical visibility especially clear. By removing the women from an image, the edit shows how easily their presence can be overlooked in accounts centered on male artists. Paired with an exhibition of portraits of 18 historical women sculptors, the film brings attention to both their work and the limits of the visual record.
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The Research Behind Visionaries
Nourry’s exhibition, Visionaries, presents monumental plaster portraits of 18 historical female sculptors. It opened at the Petit Palais in Paris on October 20, coinciding with Art Basel Paris. The museum exhibition and documentary are linked parts of a project focused on the creative legacies of women who worked in a largely male art world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Google’s account describes the project as a collaboration among Nourry, Lorca and Google Arts & Culture. Its foundation is a year of archival research, while its visual reconstructions rely on generative tools to fill gaps where photographs of studios are absent. The scenes should be understood as AI-generated interpretations based on archival material, not as recovered original images.
““Because few historical photos of their actual workspaces exist,” the team used generative AI and image-editing models to bring the studios to life.”
— Google Arts & Culture project description
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What the Reconstructions Can Show
The available project description does not detail how the team verified each reconstructed studio’s layout, furnishings or appearance, or how much of each scene is based on specific archival evidence. It also does not identify all three art historians or provide a list of the archival materials used for each sculptor. The scenes are generated interpretations, so viewers cannot treat them as photographic records of the original workspaces.
The source account gives no independent evaluation of the models’ historical accuracy or information about how the museum labels the AI-generated material in its galleries. Those details remain unclear from the published description.
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Exhibition Runs Through January
Visionaries is scheduled to remain at the Petit Palais until January 30, 2027, with the documentary installation in the museum galleries. Google Arts & Culture has also made a behind-the-scenes trailer available online. The project announcement does not specify whether the film or exhibition will travel to other venues, or whether further research materials will be released.
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Key Questions
What is the documentary about?
It is a 10-minute film that uses AI-generated studio scenes to present the working environments of women sculptors connected to Paris, including Camille Claudel, Jane Poupelet and Nancy Elizabeth Prophet.
Who made the film?
The project brings together artist Prune Nourry, director Vincent Lorca and Google Arts & Culture. Google creative technologist-in-residence Lynn Cherny worked on the AI-generated reconstructions.
Are the recreated studios historical photographs?
No. They are AI-generated interpretations made using archival photographs and other research. The project description says few photographs of the artists’ actual workspaces survive.
Where and when can visitors see Visionaries?
The exhibition is at the Petit Palais in Paris. It opened October 20, 2026, and is scheduled to run through January 30, 2027, with the film installation in the museum galleries.
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